Sony's viral Xperia 1 VIII AI blunder is painful to watch

It’s hard to imagine how Sony's social media post about the new Xperia 1 VIII and its AI Camera Assistant could have gone worse.

What at first looked like an error has been revealed to be an entirely serious way of attracting attention to the new Sony smartphone, and the awful truth is, it will probably be all anyone remembers about the phone, and do yet more damage to AI’s already precarious role in photography.

What was Sony thinking?

Gaslighting, rage bait, or worse?

Here’s what’s going on. Sony posted a message on its official X account showing a series of side-by-side photos, made up of original photos taken by the Xperia 1 VIII, and the same photo edited by its AI Camera Assistant feature.

Nothing unusual about that, except it was immediately obvious the AI Camera Assistant photos were considerably worse than the originals. It’s not even subjective, as anyone with eyes would recognize the AI’s images exhibit many problems, from being over exposed and drained of color, to robbing them of life, depth, and realism.

The downgrade was so noticeable, it was initially assumed someone had got the images round the wrong way, and the ones labeled “original” were actually the AI-enhanced ones. Others took it as rage bait, and that Sony was fishing for engagement. Sony clarified what was going on in a later post, but it wasn’t the explanation anyone expected.

Sony clarifies the situation

Amazingly, it wasn’t a mistake

In Sony’s follow-up message, it said the AI Camera Assistant doesn’t edit photos, but suggests four different settings that take the scene in “different creative directions,” and the photographer is free to choose the one that works.

It means the images aren’t a mistake, they’re not mislabeled, and are indeed designed to promote the phone and AI feature. What’s more, the images were not created solely for the social media post. All are also used on the Xperia 1 VIII’s pre-order page on Sony’s website.

The original post has more than 13 million views on X at the time of writing, and the majority of the nearly 4,000 replies are negative, or making fun of the images using memes.

Sony also posted the images on its official Xperia Instagram page, and it was met with the same reaction. Many wondered if the images had been accidentally swapped, and others questioned whether the post was a joke or not.

Sony thinks this will sell the new Xperia

It probably won’t

Sony announced the Xperia 1 VIII on May 14. The phone doesn’t look like it will be released in the US (it abandoned the US with the Xperia 1 VI), but will be sold in the UK, where it costs £1,399, or around $1,870. It’s more expensive than the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL, and the Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max.

It’s already a hard sell, but it also has to compete with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and the Oppo Find X9 Ultra, two superb camera phones available for a similar price.

Sony hasn’t targeted the mass smartphone market for a while, and instead leaned into its camera expertise to attract buyers. After all, estimates put Sony’s market share for smartphone image sensors at more than 50%, meaning a lot of manufacturers have faith in the brand’s components and technology, so why shouldn't keen consumers?

It makes it even more baffling that the company decided to promote the Xperia 1 VIII’s camera — its major selling point, remember — using these awful images. It’s not a casual social media error. The images and narrative are used across the board, and will therefore have gone through multiple stages of approval before assaulting our eyes.

It’s AI’s fault

Fear of being left behind

So what happened? If the promotion was signed off at each stage, it means Sony wanted it out into the world. It can’t be because of the images, and therefore has to be about the AI Camera Assistant feature.

Every technology company, mobile or otherwise, is obsessed with AI, and a lot of them fear that by not investing or promoting it, they’ll fall behind and be dismissed as stuck in the past. Whether it’s Allbirds pivoting from shoes to AI, or Anthropic telling everyone its new AI is so powerful it could have a severe impact on the world, we’re being shown and told AI is a big deal.

Sony couldn’t release the Xperia 1 VIII without any AI, and integrating an AI assistant into the camera is the only logical route for the brand. Unfortunately, in its haste to show the world its phone also has AI inside, it has failed to come up with a compelling use case for it, and simply made it a collection of AI filters no-one in their right mind will want to use.

Even its AI Camera Assistant promotional video doesn’t really sell the feature. We can see there are some uninspired filters for a portrait photo, before the protagonist settles on one with a heavily blurred background. Is it better than the original? Not really. Is it any different to the features we see on other phones? Not really.

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But Sony has got the message across that it has an AI feature in the camera on the new Xperia 1 VIII, and that’s almost certainly the intention behind all this.

Why it’s a serious problem

It’s going to define the phone

Uninspired AI features are nothing new, and many mobile fans will be used to being told they’re far more innovative and useful than they really are. See Samsung’s Now Brief for proof, something which even Samsung has focused less on since it was pushed as the big feature in the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Samsung can get away with it, but I don’t think Sony can. The Xperia 1 VIII may be a fantastic phone, and the camera may also be really good, but the decision to market it using the AI Camera Assistant may end up defining the phone before it’s even released.

Will any serious mobile camera fanatic want to try the Xperia 1 VIII out when Sony decides the best thing about it is a dodgy AI feature? Probably not, and when 13 million people have seen and laughed at a social media post about the phone, they’re hardly likely to buy it and discover if it’s really that bad for themselves.

Time will tell, but Sony has got some serious damage control to do if it wants to fix the Xperia 1 VIII’s reputation, and other brands would be wise to think twice about marketing cameras using AI features in the future. Wishful thinking, I know.